Daily Archives: August 1, 2011

With Congress having patched together a solution to the nation’s debt crisis, President Barack Obama is free to head home to Chicago for a 50th birthday party in Uptown, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Obama is scheduled to attend a 50th birthday gala on Wednesday at the Aragon Ballroom, an event featuring Jennifer Hudson and Herbie Hancock. There’s also a dinner fundraiser planned for some special donors to go with the show at a cost of $35,800 a person.

A 34-year-old Rogers Park man is being questioned after he admitted he was in a fight with a man who was left in “very critical” condition after falling overboard into Lake Michigan, NBC-5 is reporting.

The man being questioned allegedly told police he was on the boat when he got into a fight with the man who fell in Saturday afternoon in the 800 block of North Lake Shore Drive. The 34-year-old man showed “visible marks’’ that were consistent with being in a fight, according to NBC-5.

The 30-year-old man was put on a fire department boat and taken to the 1600 block of North Lake Shore Drive, where paramedics took him by ambulance to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in “very critical condition.”

Emergency crews pulled a man from Lake Michigan east of Oak Street Beach after he fell off a boat Sunday afternoon, officials said.

The man, age 30, was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in “very critical” condition after being pulled from the water about 5 p.m., said Chicago Fire Department spokesman Chief Joe Roccasalva.

Chicago police and fire crews were called to an area just east of 800 North Lake Shore Drive about 4:53 p.m., and divers recovered a man from the water there a short while later, said Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Daniel O’Brien. Police originally had said the person found in the water was a woman, but that information was erroneous, O’Brien said.

After the man was pulled from the water by Police Marine Unit divers, he was brought to shore near North Avenue, O’Brien said